That line might spring to mind for any Dylan fans watching Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 classic, Pulse (it did for me, anyway). It hits on the same sense of loneliness that runs throughout the J-Horror gem, a topic that continues to make the film as culturally relevant today as it was 25 years ago, perhaps even more. As the film points out, there is an ever-widening gulf between us all, and the technology that was initially meant to bridge that chasm is now only adding to it, leaving us no more than ghosts calling out to each other in the dark.

Pulse (titled Kairo, or “Circuit,” in Japan) follows the stories of two individuals who are navigating very different existences in the massive metropolis of Tokyo. Michi (Kumiko Asô) makes a modest living working in a plant shop with her friends. Ryosuke (Haruhiko Katô) is a university student who mostly keeps to himself. Their paths eventually cross after a series of mysterious disappearances and suicides begin to plague their country, and it becomes evident that the dead are somehow managing to bleed into our world through the internet. As ghosts quickly begin to outnumber the living, the two strangers must figure out a way to survive or, perhaps most disquieting, if there’s even a point in doing so.

The seed for Pulse was planted sometime in the 1990’s, recalled Kurosawa during an interview featured in Arrow’s release of the film. He and writer Chiaki Konaka, with whom he had worked on a few of his early pictures (Door III, Gakkô no kaidan F), had been spit-balling ideas for a possible horror film to do together. They eventually landed on a ghost story for the film’s framework, with the duo vowing to make a movie unlike anything that had appeared in the sub-genre to that date. They envisioned entities that were more reminiscent of aliens than spirits, seeing their ghosts “as something extraterrestrial invading our real world.” The project petered out abruptly with no actual plot being written, but that idea itself would remain at the back of the director’s mind for years afterward. When the opportunity arose for him to make another movie after the breakthrough success of his film Cure (1997), Kurosawa gave the idea a dust off.

Initially released in February of 2001, Pulse would later make the rounds at film festivals like TIFF and Cannes before finally receiving a limited North American run in 2005. While some critics didn’t gel with the film (“The line that separates the uncanny and the obtuse has rarely been so thin,” complained Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman), it was mostly well received. In his review for Slant magazine, Jeremiah Kipp praised Kurosawa’s “resoundingly empathetic” storytelling style, going on to say that “he cares about the world and the people that live on this fragile planet,” and Anita Gates wrote for the New York Times: “there are very few moments [in the film] that don’t evoke a dreamlike dread of the truly unknown.”

It’s true that Pulse is that rare kind of film that can terrify viewers through sheer atmosphere alone. Shadows engulf the majority of its frames, and you quickly learn that anything could be hiding within that darkness. Eventually, even a simple silhouette in the background of a shot is enough to send goosebumps down your spine. In a recent interview on Umbrella’s 4k release, Kurosawa spoke of a surprising influence in regard to this style of scare. As a child, he was a rabid fan of the classic Hammer horror films, with 1964’s The Gorgon being a minor obsession of his. In particular, it was the shots of the title monster “standing vaguely in the background” during certain scenes that left a huge impression on the young boy. “I don’t know why, but it just scared the hell out of me,” he says today, and you can see him attempting to recreate that same kind of foreboding image in many of his efforts in the horror genre.

Any horror film that tries to utilize an emerging technology within its story always runs the risk of not only dating itself but being deemed “quaint” by viewers years down the road. The exceptions to this rule are usually directly connected to the intentions of the filmmaker. If they’re including the device as a means of making their project topical, then oftentimes their movie will lack the thematic meat to withstand the test of time. But if they’re trying to say something that is true to life, something that resonates with audiences, then people are more likely to forgive whatever dated qualities it might later have.

Pulse is definitely a case of the latter. While its main conceit (the dead are reentering our world through the internet) is admittedly a little silly by today’s standards, it’s the film’s overarching theme that continues to hit home for audiences. “More than anything, Pulse is about isolation,” says Jerry White in his fantastic book The Films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa: Master of Fear. “Specifically, the very human need to connect with another person.” It’s in that sense of loneliness where the movie draws you in.

We crave meaningful contact with others in a time when so many of our interactions feel increasingly shallow. Part of the reason for that superficiality, the movie posits, comes as a result of where a lot of these encounters are taking place: the internet (though you could slip social media into that spot seamlessly today). While that digital arena can certainly lead to legitimate friendships, all too often we never quite get the level of connection we were hoping for. As Kurosawa himself put it years later, “even though you make contact with various people [on these platforms], I think your soul remains quite lonely.”

Ryosuke personifies this well. Unlike Michi, he doesn’t seem to have any friends to speak of. He jumps onto the internet in an attempt to go where the people are (“Everyone else is on it,” he explains later), but instead of finding others to talk to, he is given an endless array of windows into the lives of people who are just as alone as he is. Once again, he finds himself on the outside looking in.

Pulse’s most haunting image is of the stains that are left behind when its characters fade out of existence. Kurosawa himself once described the idea surrounding them as one of the most frightening things he could think of, and it’s a visual that’s come to define his style of existential horror. The movie’s wandering ghosts are lucky in that they are at least corporeal, but those who have disappeared have met a far worse fate.

They are not seen.

They are not heard.

They have melted into the ether, ceasing to be.

Those stains represent not only our fear of the unknown that awaits us beyond death, but also the sensation of isolation itself. It personifies what it’s like to feel completely alone while the world races all around you. To call out and hear nothing back.

The post Trap Them in Their Loneliness: 25 Years of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘Pulse’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

These titles showcase various forms of isolation, from remote settings to extreme quarantines, to leave you on the edge of your seat.

Here’s where you can watch them this week.

For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.

Hush – AMC+, Shudder, Shout TV

Mike Flanagan mines palpable tension from isolation in his home invasion thriller. Kate Siegel stars as Maddie, a deaf and mute author who lives alone in the woods. Her self-imposed isolated existence gets violently interrupted by the arrival of a bloodthirsty maniac, setting in motion a suspenseful cat and mouse chase in the middle of the woods. It’s a good old-fashioned horror story elevated by the ingenious use of tension, sound design, and serious thrills. John Gallagher Jr., who often excels in the nice guy role, turns in a chilling performance as the ruthless killer. 

Isolation – Crackle, Prime Video

As the title indicates, this claustrophobic creature feature captures a pervasive feeling of isolation. This Irish horror feature by writer/director Billy O’Brien takes place on a rural farm where a gruesome bio-genetics experiment with the cows is well underway. When one cow gives birth to a mutated calf, born with parasitic fetuses of her own, the place becomes ground zero for a terrifying bid not only to survive but to prevent the parasitic contagion from getting out into the populace. It stars Sean Harris (The Green Knight, Possum), Ruth Negga (“Preacher,” World War Z), and The Babadook’s Essie Davis in a supporting role. 

Pulse (Kairo) – Criterion Channel, Hoopla, Max

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s supernatural chiller gives an unsettling spin on isolation via a paranormal apocalypse. A heavily overcrowded afterlife caused the dead to spill over into the world of the living to a chilling effect. They invade like a viral infection via technology, plunging the globe into hopeless despair, isolated loneliness, and, eventually, death. Kurosawa spins this tale through two distinct halves, as different groups of characters discover that ghosts are invading through the internet. The more methodical pacing allows the sense of unease to unfurl slowly, eventually stripping away any semblance of hope through terrifying spectral encounters and devastating loss.

REC – Tubi

Late-night reporter Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman Pablo, played by unseen actor Pablo Rosso, set out to cover the night shift of a local fire station for their television series “While You’re Sleeping.” A quiet, routine evening curdles into a harrowing nightmare when they get quarantined in an apartment building host to a lethal viral outbreak. Directors  Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza make viewers active participants in the terror, delivering a contemporary found footage classic that shakes up the outbreak and zombie horror formula. It builds to one chilling conclusion. The entire quadrilogy is currently on Tubi.

Sweetheart – AMC+, Shudder

Kiersey Clemons stars as Jenn, a woman marooned on a small tropical island with few resources available for survival. As if that’s not dire enough, Jenn soon discovers that a strange, predatory creature emerges from the sea every night. It’s in the vein of Cast Away, centered largely around a single performance and light on dialogue, but with an unforgettable new movie monster designed by Neville Page (65, Goosebumps). Clemons earns easy rooting interest as the adaptable and resilient Jenn, while writer/director J.D. Dillard captures her isolation and survival bid with heartfelt emotion and stunning imagery – the first glimpse of the creature is an all-time movie moment.

The post Five Isolation Themed Horror Movies to Stream This Week appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

This week also continues HBO’s compelling “The Last of Us,” an apocalyptic series based on the video game. The fourth episode will air this Sunday on HBO and HBO Max. Naturally, it feels apropos to continue the apocalypse theme in this week’s streaming picks.

While horror’s apocalypse starter often falls to zombies, these five apocalyptic movies showcase other means of humanity’s doom, from Gates of Hell to extraterrestrial takeovers.

As always, here’s where you can stream them this week…

For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.

The Beyond – AMC+, Fandor, Kanopy, Peacock, Screambox, Shudder, Tubi

One of Lucio Fulci’s most beloved horror films and the second entry in his unofficial “Gates of Hell” trilogy, The Beyond is also the director’s most influential. Set in Louisiana, a young woman inherits a hotel and discovers it was built over one of the gates to Hell. Bleak, surreal, and dreamlike in its storytelling, The Beyond toes the line between beauty and horror. Essentially, The Beyond is what happens when you cross Fulci with H.P. Lovecraft. The result is a foreboding, apocalyptic horror movie with a tangible sense of doom.

Body Snatchers – Screambox (February 1)

Abel Ferrara’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake shifted the story from its California setting in favor of a military base in Alabama, making for an interesting parallel between the structural army and the conformity of the alien invasion. It follows teen Marti Malone (Gabrielle Anwar), the daughter of an Environmental Protection agent studying the effects of the military on the ecosystem, as she uncovers a paranoid plot of aliens covertly taking over humanity. The impressive cast ensures this propulsive thriller maintains airtight suspense, but look for Meg Tilly to steal the movie with a bone-chilling monologue.

The Girl with All the Gifts – Kanopy, Pluto TV, Roku, Tubi, Vudu

Based on the novel by Mike Carey, The Girl with All the Gifts is set in the near future when a parasitic fungus has ravaged the world. Those infected turn into mindless “hungries.” Only a small group of children seem immune; they still hunger for flesh but retain the ability to learn and think. Among them is Melanie (Sennia Nanua), the most intelligent and remarkable. When the military base holding the children captive falls, Melanie embarks on a quest with her teacher and the survivors, discovering her new place in the world. Nanua’s casting lends a new layer to the narrative, and Glenn Close makes for a formidable, icy antagonist in an already brutal world.

Pulse – AMC+, Mubi, Plex, Roku, Vudu

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s supernatural chiller Pulse (Kairo) gives an eerie supernatural spin to the apocalypse. A heavily overcrowded afterlife caused the dead to spill over into the world of the living to a chilling effect. They invade like a viral infection via technology, plunging the globe into hopeless despair and death. Kurosawa spins this tale through two distinct halves, as different groups of characters discover that ghosts are invading through the internet. The more methodical pacing allows the sense of unease to unfurl slowly, eventually stripping away any semblance of hope through terrifying spectral encounters and devastating loss.

Take Shelter – Hulu, Tubi

Writer/Director Jeff Nichols, a writer on the upcoming A Quiet Place: Day One, already established his apocalyptic horror chops in Take Shelter. Michael Shannon stars as Curtis, a construction worker and family man suddenly plagued by visions of the apocalypse. But are these visions real or a symptom of inherited mental illness? Nichols toes the line between haunting drama and apocalyptic thriller, centering this tale around an emotionally charged performance by Shannon. The fallout and paranoia that arises from Curtis’s unraveling make this a worthwhile watch.

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Suddenly, AIM chat rooms connected faceless strangers in intangible spaces, stoking parents’ fears that their children might be engaging with sexual predators or anonymous psychopaths hiding behind computer screens. Meanwhile, the Y2K bug, a much-dreaded computer programming flaw, brought to public consciousness the possibility of certain digital doom as the clock ticked closer to midnight on December 31, 1999. (A pervasive fear was that computer networks all over the world would abruptly crash, sending airplanes plummeting to the ground, among more nuclear horrors.) Even Furby, the holiday season must-have robotic toy of the late ‘90s, wasn’t immune to suspicion. 

Released in 2001, Japanese horror film Kairo captures the anxieties of the time with unnerving precision and slow-creeping dread. Set in an unusually desolate, overcast Tokyo, the Kiyoshi Kurosawa-directed film follows the converging stories of Michi and Ryosuke, two young adults, strangers to one another, whose friends and loved ones are slowly disappearing, seemingly off the face of the earth. As Michi and Ryosuke begin to unravel the mystery behind these disappearances, they discover that malevolent entities are using the internet as a portal to enter our world. 

All who encounter the unsettling cyber-spectres of Kairo (known as Pulse in English, though not to be confused with the 2006 Western remake of the same name) develop an inescapable feeling of existential despair. As each character in the film is exposed to the phantoms, they, too, eventually become ghosts of a sort, fading away until nothing is left but a black, mildewy stain where they last existed in the corporeal world. Some victims of this ghostly computer virus die via suicide, while others simply succumb, losing their will to live and vanishing from the physical plane altogether; unable to live with the deep, unavoidable loneliness they’ve been infected with. 

It’s a scary premise, outweighed only by the deep melancholy it inspires. Kurosawa’s bleak cyber-J-horror juxtaposes the spooky uncertainty surrounding the era’s burgeoning technologies with the sorrows of social withdrawal and emotional disconnect in the face of a paradoxically lonesome, hyperconnected world. And yet, the film’s thought-provoking allegories may be even more relevant to society now than they first were two decades ago. 

Kairo’s central themes — loneliness, social isolation, and interpersonal withdrawal online — parallel the state of the world and the internet today to eerie effect. We’re connected more than ever, much more than when Kairo was first released: on our touchscreen smartphones, our Twitter accounts, our Zoom video calls. Technology has made human interaction more instantaneous and convenient, bypassing the limitations of time and space. In others ways, it’s made communication more synthetic, even compulsory—something that has become more apparent in recent years.

Kairo is especially timely in the context of social distancing. While the coronavirus has kept many of us holed up in our homes for our safety and the safety of others, newer, more complex anxieties have emerged. For many, the lack of face-to-face interaction and social haptics amid stay-at-home orders feels dystopian and unnatural, while the mounting pressures to constantly interact, make ourselves available, and manage interpersonal relationships using tools like social media and video conferencing can be overwhelming. Our technological overdependence has become the abnormal new-normal, much like the tech-apocalypse that takes place in the film.

The toll of this predicament on mental health, a topic that looms over Kairo like the static whirring of a dial-up modem, has been monumental. Last year, the CDC reported that American adults were experiencing “considerably elevated adverse mental health conditions associated with COVID-19,” resulting in “increased substance use and elevated suicidal ideation.” According to the Washington Post, suicide rates have increased among certain groups over the course of the pandemic.

Suicide is a recurring element that intensifies the unrelenting gloom of Kairo. Within the first ten minutes of the film, Michi, concerned about Taguchi, a friend who has been missing for a week after promising to deliver a disk to her place of work, goes to the young man’s apartment, where she finds him in a despondent state following an encounter with a disturbing presence on his computer. While Michi is distracted, Taguchi casually grabs an ethernet cable and hangs himself, setting into motion the events of the film. Here, the gruesome tragedy of suicide represents the tangible impacts of social isolation’s effects on mental health, as well as serves as a metaphor for internet users’ withdrawal from society—a social death, if you will.

Simply existing in the digital sphere is fraught with its own unique cultural perils, not so unlike the lost souls Kairo presents. Our increased digital connection has made relationships more delicate and tense. Much like the spectral virus in Kairo, the social infection that is online harassment causes decay in digital communities. Misinformation spreads like virtual wildfire, making individuals on the web volatile, distrustful, and constantly on the defense. Others feel totally abandoned by society altogether, cast out or discarded via the trash chute of unforgiving cyber-social rejection. Young social media users and remote workers feel alienated the most, according to recent research studies and polls—ironic, considering the technologies meant to connect us may be pushing us further apart in the long run. 

The crushing weight of hopelessness in the face of perennial loneliness weighs heavily over Kairo’s near 2-hour runtime. In one of the film’s saddest scenes, Junko, a friend who has come into contact with a particularly horrifying ghost, somberly asks Michi if she’s “just going to die like this.” When Michi cheerily responds, “Of course not,” the answer is too unbearable for Junko. “That’s right then, I’ll just keep on living, all alone,” Junko quietly laments. She then silently walks off and, when Michi’s back is turned, fades away into nothingness against a wall in Michi’s apartment. 

An oppressive sense of unabating aloneness imbues Kairo with an air of unending woe—a feeling not all that different than what someone might experience after “doomscrolling” for hours on their phone late at night. In more than one scene, characters log onto a strange website that beckons, “Would you like to meet a ghost?,” where solitary, anonymous netizens linger on webcam, seemingly trapped in the dark prisons that are their own homes. It’s no surprise that everyone in Kairo lives alone, in their own isolated little apartments where even neighbors seem to have evaporated. 

“People don’t really connect, you know. We all live totally separately,” muses Harue, a computer science grad student and new friend of Ryosuke, not long before she too falls victim to her own angst. Indeed, our world is more crowded than ever, and so are our servers. Somehow, though, we feel so very alone. 

Twenty years later, Kairo remains one of the preeminent cyber age horror movies, having undoubtedly paved the way for films such as CAM, Unfriended, and Host. A profound digital ghost story about interpersonal connections, isolation, and social withdrawal in the 21st century, Kurosawa’s prescient film lingers long in the mind, haunting viewers much like the tragic spectres it conjures on screen. Viewed through the lens of our modern world and collective online experience, however, Kairo appears to reflect us back at ourselves—a lone, mirrored image suspended in the artificial glow of our screens, reminding us that we are the ghost in our own machine. 

If you or someone you know needs help, please visit the National Suicide Prevention Hotline website or call 1-800-273-8255.

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In most internet horror movies, the web functions like some sort of Hellmouth, a deal we’ve made with the (sometimes literal) devil in exchange for comfort and convenience. The characters in Unfriended: Dark Web can play Cards Against Humanity together without leaving their homes, but the evil hacking group they anger uses those same networks to destroy their lives. Friend Request’s protagonist gains popularity through social media, but Facebook becomes the conduit for a vengeful spirit.

To be sure, Pulse sometimes seems equally alarmist. Its split narrative structure follows two sets of 20-somethings in millennial Tokyo, the first involving three coworkers — Michi (Kumiko Asô), Junko (Kurume Arisaka), and Yabe (Masatoshi Matsuo) — investigating the suicide of their friend Taguchi (Kenji Mizahashi). The search not only reveals Taguchi’s internet addiction, but also the existence of “Forbidden Rooms”: haunted spaces marked by red tape around their doors and windows. After Yabe, and then Junko, encounter ghosts in Forbidden Rooms, they both fall into deep despair, leading to the former’s suicide and the latter’s dissolution into grey pixel-like dust.

At the same time, engineering student Ryosuke (Haruhiko Katô) finds his computer automatically connecting to the net and playing disturbing videos. A tech novice, Kawashima enlists the aid of computer science major/paranormal researcher Harue (Koyuki), who theorizes that the afterlife has become too full, and now ghosts are making their way through any portal available, including the internet.

As more specters come through the internet and in Forbidden Rooms, suicides and disappearances skyrocket, transforming Tokyo into a literal ghost town. With the rest of her friends gone, Michi eventually joins Ryosuke and Harue, desperate to retain their will to live in an empty world.

That synopsis might imply a story filled with incident, but Pulse is anything but fast-paced. Like most J-horror of its era, the film puts mood over narrative clarity, and that’s particularly true of Kurosawa, whose movies have been described by musician Jim O’Rourke as “existentialist tone poems in the guise of entertainment”. As demonstrated by his tendency to deliver backstory in clunky exposition dumps (if at all), Kurosawa would rather watch people walk through an empty Tokyo city center than explain that a ghost apocalypse has wiped out the city.

That style might frustrate a first-time viewer, but it also underscores the film’s central theme. The audience feels just as alienated from the characters as they do from each other. We don’t know why things happen, we don’t know why people make their decisions. They just do.

Nothing illustrates this distance better than the first Forbidden Room sequence. Yabe enters to find a nondescript cement corridor, empty save for a leather couch above one end. As he studies a clump of red tape on the wall above the couch, Yabe realizes that he’s not alone, and turns around to see the figure of a woman at the opposite end. Her arms swaying with an uncanny vigor, the figure strides toward Yabe, stumbling midway but continuing with unnerving determination. A terrified Yabe scurries behind the couch, but a series of shot/reverse shots show the woman slowly peering at him over the seat, strands of her hair billowed by an absent breeze.

In an interview with Reverse Shot, Kurosawa described ghosts in Japanese fiction as “foreign presences” that you can’t fight or ignore, but have to let “coexist.” That might sound dull, but this scene shows why it’s horrifying. The figure approaches Yabe, but she doesn’t kill or even touch him. The ethereal quality of her pace is unsettling, but nothing in her body or face is grotesque. It’s simply blank and pale, persistently staring.

Ghosts exist. That’s all they need to be scary, to drive Yabe and everyone else who encounters them into states of irrecoverable despair. Neither active threats nor walking memento mori, Kurosawa’s ghosts reveal that death brings no relief from the pain of living. They terrify because they show the characters that no one can truly connect with another person. We are all permanently, helplessly alone.

Pulse explores this theme several ways, some of them clunkier than others. Early in the film, Harue shows Ryosuke a computer program with white dots floating along a blank screens. The dots are like people, she explains: they try to come near each other, but “they never really connect.” She expounds on this idea later, after she’s encountered a ghost, telling Ryosuke that she used to look forward to death because she would be joined with everyone else who passed on. “But in death,” she says, “You’re all alone too.” Ryosuke rejects this claim, repeatedly promising to stay with Harue and refusing to believe in the ghosts, even when he actually sees them. But after stumbling into a Forbidden Room and coming face to face with a ghost, Ryosuke too succumbs to its message: “Death is eternal loneliness.”

Kurosawa makes the point more effectively in his portrayal of everyday life, showing the characters’ inability to connect with one another. After learning of Taguchi’s suicide, Yabe talks about it at a cafe with Junko and Michi, casually telling his friends that he has thought about hanging himself too. Not only do the pair let Yabe’s confession pass without comment, they don’t even look at him, or at one another, at any point in their conversation. When Junko and Harue fall into depression after seeing a ghost, Michi and Ryosuke promise that they’ll stick with their friends and pull through together, but they almost always leave immediately after making the declaration. It’s usually for a good, mundane reason —to make Junko some lunch or to get a tool to help Harue — but the message is clear. No matter how much we want to stand by one another, no matter how much we think we’re helping, we’re constantly abandoning one another.

By the time Harue launches into the movie’s sole Luddite rant, we understand that the problem predates the internet. Continuing her thoughts about loneliness in life and death, Harue shows Ryosuke a wall of monitors, each playing a stream of men alone in their rooms. “Are they alive?” Harue asks of the internet users, “How are they different than ghosts?”

She makes a solid point, one found in everything from local news editorials to net-panic movies of the 90s: the web only gives the appearance of connectivity, but we’re only separating ourselves from one another. But as indicated by the way ghosts manifest in decidedly lo-fi places like warehouses and library stacks, Pulse insists that extreme seclusion exists independent of the internet, that computers are just one of many ways we can isolate ourselves.

One of the movie’s reoccurring images illustrates this inescapable isolation. After Taguchi’s suicide, his friends find a disk containing a picture of him in his room, staring at his computer monitors with his back to the camera. On one monitor, we see the exact same image — an isolated man repeating over and over, infinitely inevitable and infinitely alone. On the other monitor, we see Taguchi’s ghostly face reflecting on the black screen.

Taken by itself, the shot makes a simple anti-internet point, that the web promised Taguchi boundless community, but all he found was his own emptiness. But that’s not the only time we see that picture. It occurs near the start of the film, when Michi calls to check in on Taguchi. It’s the exact same shot, with the same yellow haze and Taguchi standing still, but it’s accompanied by a ringing phone. Phones are just as useless as computers, the scene tells us. We’ve always been alone.

Ultimately, Pulse suggests that no medium can overcome the solitude fundamental to human existence. Kurosawa extends this point to the medium he’s using, making us viewers just as alienated as the characters. He shoots many scenes as long, unbroken takes, with the camera peering through windows or behind plants, keeping distance from his subjects. He only lets the camera approach a character or take one’s point of view during a haunting: we watch Taguchi ignoring Michi’s phone call as he stares into his blank screen; we take a ghosts perspective as Harue clutches its face and begs for connection; we look through Ryosuke’s eyes as a ghost’s face becomes too close and clear for him to ignore.

While the innovative “computer screen as movie screen” effect in Unfriended or in the upcoming Searching may give those films a level of realism, putting viewers in the place of characters as they encounter online monsters, Pulse’s camera work better illustrates the terror of the internet. It’s not the innovations offered by newer apps and impressive technology. It’s our human loneliness, something no technology can cause or overcome.

The post [Editorial] Why ‘Pulse’ Remains the Definitive Internet Horror Movie appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Based on the novel by Yutaka Maekawa and co-written by Chihiro Ikeda and Kurosawa himself, Creepy starts promisingly. The film opens in an interrogation room in which expert criminal psychologist Koichi Takakura (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is interrogating a man who he deems to be the “perfect psychopath.” After a mishap leaves the criminal dead and Takakura wounded, he quits the force and retires to the countryside with his wife Yasuko (Yûko Takeuchi). He eventually grows restless and begins looking into a missing persons case from six years ago in which a father, mother and son disappeared, leaving behind the daughter Saki (Haruna Kawaguchi) with no memory of what happened. Meanwhile, Yasuko tries to befriend their new neighbor Mr. Nishino (Teruyuki Kagawa) who is the embodiment of the film’s title. 

Kurosawa telegraphs fairly early on that Nishino is somehow connected to the missing persons case. This makes the first hour or so of the film’s 130-minute runtime drag in places. The last act is appropriately disturbing, but because you know exactly where it’s going it takes a lot of the suspense out of the proceedings. There are still plenty of twists and turns to be had, as Saki slowly regains her memory of what happened the night her family disappeared and Nishino’s invalid wife, who never comes out of the house, is repeatedly brought up in conversation but never seen. It’s also difficult to avoid the chills that are sent up your spine when Nishino’s daugher tells Takakura “He’s not my father. He’s a total stranger.” The horror elements are there and they are effective, but the film could have easily been trimmed by about 20 minutes.

That being said, Creepy is filmed expertly. Kurosawa frames his shots from a distance, giving many scenes an impersonal feel. You begin to feel like a voyeur spying on your neighbor, which is undoubtedly the intention. Akiko Ashizawa’s cinematography is also impressive, such as a scene in which the camera pans out at an overhead angle, showing just how alone the Takakura is in an abandoned neighborhood. It works from a literal standpoint and as a metaphor for the inner turmoil he is suffering from. So if you find yourself bored with the events transpiring on screen, you will at least be mesmerized by the filming style.

Every performer gives a remarkably committed performance, but the true standout is Kagawa as the eerie Nishino and his sinister smile (pictured above). He is, well, creepy. One moment he’s amiable and the next he’s withdrawn and a few moments later he’s absolutely loathsome. The shifts in character are seamless and simply engrossing. Frustrations will be had with nearly every character in the film, as they are all incredibly flawed and make some terrible choices. This can make Creepy difficult to watch at times, but it does provide a necessary amount of realism to the characters.

Creepy isn’t exactly the return to form that fans are expecting from Kurusawa, but there is plenty to like about it. Filled with top-notch performances, haunting cinematography and wonderful direction from Kurusawa, Creepy is worth checking out for those looking for a creepy (sorry) good time.

Creepy will have its Texas premiere at the Austin Asian American Film Festival on Saturday November 5th at 8:45pm CT.

The post [Review] Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘Creepy’ Earns its Title appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The film is an allegory for how technology and social media, while bringing us together online, ultimately cause us to drift apart in the real world, creating a sense of isolation. It’s absolutely fantastic and is one of the few J-horror films that manages to still terrify me with each viewing. There’s something about the atmosphere of the film that is incredibly dour and unsettling, which I relish.

Now, Arrow Video has announced that they will be releasing a Blu-ray home video edition for both US and UK audiences that will include some phenomenal extras, such as new interviews with Kurosawa and cinematographer Junichiro Hayashi as well as a new “appreciation” video featuring Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett (You’re Next, Blair Witch, V/H/S), and a reversible sleeve, plus more. The full list of specials can be found below.

“A group of young people in Tokyo begin to experience strange phenomena involving missing co-workers and friends, technological breakdown, and a mysterious website which asks the compelling question, “Do you want to meet a ghost?” After the unexpected suicides of several friends, three strangers set out to explore a city which is growing more empty by the day, and to solve the mystery of what lies within a forbidden room in an abandoned construction site, mysteriously sealed shut with red packing tape.”

The UK version is coming out in early December (pre-order here) while the US version doesn’t have a confirmed release date yet.

•High Definition digital transfer
•High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations
•Original 5.1 audio (DTS-HD on the Blu-ray)
•New optional English subtitle translation
•New interview with writer/director Kiyoshi Kurosawa
•New interview with cinematographer Junichiro Hayashi
•The Horror of Isolation: a new video appreciation featuring Adam Wingard & Simon Barrett (Blair Witch, You’re Next)
•Archive ‘Making of’ documentary, plus four archive behind-the-scenes featurettes
•Premiere footage from the Cannes Film Festival
•Cast and crew introductions from opening day screenings in Tokyo
•Trailers and TV Spots
•Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tommy Pocket

The post Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘Kairo’ (‘Pulse’) Getting the Arrow Video Treatment! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It turns out that one of the big reasons those films and movies like them are so effective is because of their fantastic use of sound design (something I’m very happy to see mentioned) as well as a difference in conventions. Simply put, Asian ghosts don’t play by the same rules as many other monsters, so they can create a far more suspenseful atmosphere whenever they so desire.

I went through a J-horror phase several years ago where I devoured pretty much anything that I could get my hands on. That’s why I think I had such a great time with this video, which really does a fine job at investigating and making its own point as to why J-Horror films scare us so much! Personally, the one that truly unsettled me down to my very core was Kairo.

Check it out and let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

The post This Video Tackles Why J-Horror Scares Us So Much appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It’s October, which means we want to help you plan your Halloween spookfest! Be it a big costume party, a small gathering of your close friends, a night in with your loved ones, or even just you chilling on your own, the mood needs to be properly set and what better way to do that than with a solid horror score? From playfully delightful to eerily sinister to full out nightmare chaos, we’ve compiled a list of 31 essential horror scores that you need to check out!

Below is full list, which includes composers such as Danny Elfman, Jerry Goldsmith, Goblin, Howard Shore, Douglas Pipes, Takefumi Haketa, Krzysztof Komeda, and much, much more. Additionally, this list isn’t just movies. We’ve also tapped a few video games as well as TV shows, so there’s a nice bit of range to this list.

Give these tracks a listen and let us know which ones you think we missed out on!

1.) The Perfume of the Lady in Black – Nicola Piovani
2.) Suspiria – Goblin
3.) Alien – Jerry Goldsmith
4.) Rosemary’s Baby – Krzysztof Komeda
5.) The Beyond – Fabio Frizzi
6.) Halloween – John Carpenter
7.) Insidious – Joseph Bishara
8.) Friday the 13th – Harry Manfredini
9.) Silent Hill 2 – Akira Yamaoka
10.) Resident Evil 2 – Masami Ueda, Shusaku Uchiyama, Syun Nishigaki
11.) Lord of Illusions – Simon Boswell
12.) Clive Barker’s Undying – Bill Brown
13.) Twin Peaks – Angelo Badalamenti
14.) Nightmare on Elm Street – Charles Bernstein
15.) Hannibal – Brian Reitzell
16.) The Fog – John Carpenter
17.) The Omen – Jerry Goldsmith
18.) Trick r Treat – Douglas Pipes
19.) Psycho – Bernard Herrmann
20.) Evil Dead – Roque Baños
21.) Beetlejuice – Danny Elfman
22.) Jaws – John Williams
23.) Bram Stoker’s Dracula – Wojciech Kilar
24.) Kairo (Pulse) – Takefumi Haketa
25.) It Follows – Disasterpeace
26.) Dawn of the Dead – Goblin
27.) The Addams Family – Marc Shaiman
28.) Sleepy Hollow – Danny Elfman
29.) Cape Fear – Bernard Herrmann
30.) Candyman – Philip Glass
31.) The Fly – Howard Shore

The post 31 Essential Horror Scores appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Films like The Conjuring, One Missed Call (the original, of course), and even Beetlejuice are movies that I can happily watch multiple times and not get sick of them.

So I wanted to take today to show some love and appreciation to this subgenre that has been getting quite a bit of love over the past few years! Head on down for several of my favorite entries and then tell me yours!

The post What Are Your Favorite Ghost Movies? appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

I’ve made it quite clear that I was never a fan of the first Puscifer release, V Is For Vagina but also how I was completely won over by Conditions Of My Parole. Now I’ve been presented with a new EP entitled Donkey Punch The Night Away. With two new tracks, two covers and three remixes, it’s an interesting beast, one that took more than a few spins to really understand and appreciate. Join me below for my full thoughts.

The album opens up with the band’s cover of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, the ubiquitous and unmistakable Queen song. It’s a faithful rendition that is immediately recognizable without being a carbon copy. By changing a few of the vocal melodies and creating some original sounds and tones, it’s a great cover. However, it’s so out of place tonally with the rest of the album that it simply doesn’t fit. Even if the lyrics of the song are morose and dark, the music is far too chipper to be a part of this collection.

The next track is the first new song, “Breathe”, which I love, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. It’s very adventurous in terms of the sonic textures and tones it uses, ranging from haunting guitars to sci fi-esque synth patches. The vocal play between Keenan and Carina Round are fascinating, their voices playfully teasing each other, caressing seductively. Indeed, this entire song has a strong erotic vibe pulsing throughout.

Afterwards, we are treated to the second new song, “Dear Brother”, which sounds like a natural progression from the tracks of Conditions Of My Parole. Much like how that album was described as Twin Peaks set in the desert, this track has a dusty, open feel about it.

The album then comes around to another cover, this time of the classic ‘80’s heavy metal anthem, Accept’s “Balls To The Wall”. While the original is balls out (no pun intended) metal, this cover is far more emotional and features an intro that is quite reminiscent of A Perfect Circle’s “Brena”. In the end, this song is a beautiful cover that builds to a desperate, large chorus. This cover will easily satisfy fans of Depeche Mode and The Cult.

From there the album features three mixes, one for “Breathe”, one for “Dear Brother”, and one for “Balls To The Wall”. The “Breathe (Drumcell Rework)” remix is very cold and mechanical with the voices hovering like ghosts above. It would make for a perfect end credits song for Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo. The “Dear Brother (Denton Rework)” remix is heavily inspired by ‘80’s electronic and features syncopated stabbing synths. At points, the vocals are pitch-shifted so low they seem almost demonic. The final remix, the “Balls To The Wall (Silent Servant El Guapo Mix)”, features no vocals whatsoever and is quite monotonous. However, it is incredibly hypnotic and its 4+ minute length goes by quickly and without warning.

The Final Word: Donkey Punch The Night is a very solid EP that will definitely appeal to Puscifer fans as well as those who are into intelligent and challenging music. While it is bookended by tracks that ultimately hinder the full product, the tracks within are of stellar quality and writing, making this a very worthy EP to check out.

Got any thoughts/questions/concerns for Jonathan Barkan? Shoot him a message on Twitter or on Bloody-Disgusting!

The post [Album Review] Puscifer ‘Donkey Punch The Night EP’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.